Defensive Strategy
Understand how the game works The first step to defending yourself is to know what damage can be done against you, and what cannot. *No one can destroy your City. They cannot destroy your Buildings. Everything that you build is safe. *No one can make you unlearn Research. Once you have learned, or even started to learn a skill, it is yours to keep. *They can steal resources. Food, Wood, Stone and Ore that you have in your inventory can be stolen if it is not protected. Gold in your inventory can be stolen and cannot be protected. *Wilderness tiles can be stolen if they are not protected. You will lose the gathering bonus from the tile when this happens. This means you will experience a sudden loss of resource income. *Your Might will only go down if you lose Troops. Attackers can kill your troops if they are set to defend your city against a much stronger army. You can also lose troops to desertion if you run out of food to feed them. *Your Defensive Units can be destroyed by an attack. This will not cost you any might, but it will cost you resources to build them back again later. *There is no honor in this game. People with 25k+ armies will attack you. It's not fair. You need to be prepared to deal with someone who doesn't care about fair. The game will not stop them. Ask them to stop The first thing you should try when you get attacked is to ask the attacker to stop. Many people have a personal sense of honor and they will not attack smaller players who are trying to enjoy the game. High level players often attack people because they think they are idle and therefore easy to farm for resources. Ask politely, without threatening. If you make empty threats, they will be recognized and will probably result in further attacks. If the attacker is a member of an alliance, ask the chancellor of that alliance to ask them to stop. Alliances are usually responsible for the conduct of their members. Again, be polite. Join an Alliance If you are a member of an alliance yourself, you can have your chancellor ask the attacker's chancellor to stop the attacks lest a war they start a war between your alliances. Your allies can also provide you with additional resources and/or troop reinforcements to help you build and protect your city. Protect your resources Build a Storehouse to protect your resources from being stolen. Work on your Shrinking Powder research as well. This will allow you to keep a certain amount of food, wood, stone and ore in your inventory where it cannot be stolen by an attacker. If you have more resources than you can protect in your storehouse, consider moving the extras to your other city if you have one. Or, you can even hide some of them in a wilderness space if you think that wilderness is less likely to be attacked than the city. Protect your gold Good Gold management is key to saving gold. Use the Increase Gold strategy. This keeps your knights employed without creating a stockpile of gold. - when you need gold, go to your castle and use the increase gold button. Immediately spend that gold: buy your latest research, or put it on the market for some resource you need. Do not leave it lying around to be stolen. If you know an attack is coming from your Watch Tower and you have gold in your inventory, go to your Market and buy any resource that is currently available for sale. The idea is to spend your gold on a resource that will then take 30 minutes to reach your city, instead of losing it for nothing to an attacker. Protect your troops Put your troops in Sanctuary. Never defend your castle. Don't waste the troops, you'll just lose might when they die to overwhelming odds. Defensive units won't cost you might, but they are still a waste of resources better spent on city upgrades. Wait for them to go away Follow this advice, and most people farming for resources will move along when they can't get anything from you. There's no point in repeating an attack with no profit. Once you reach 300k might or so, you should be strong enough to defend against attacks from other players. Build up an army of 30k troops of your own, and start working on your Defensive Units to support them. Then you can start defending your city if you like.